When I first decided to level my paladin, I knew I wanted to try my hand at tanking. I’ve DPSed on my hunter, I’ve healed on my priest, but I’ve never leveled a character that could tank.

I still managed to get to 75 without giving it a try though. I’ve run my fair share of dungeons, but with all the Death Knights and Druids around, tanking always seemed to be covered. I got to DPS, which I really enjoy! (Or ocassionally paladin heal, which I don’t enjoy so much.)

To be honest, I was scared. How do you tank for the first time with a bunch of strangers? What if I can’t handle it and cause the group to fail? Ah! /stress

Well, after getting a hand from Psynister’s tanking guide and reading a bit of the Basic Training forum at Maintankadin, I felt I was ready. I had my Cobalt Armour all ready to go, and I queued myself up for Utgarde Keep and The Nexus. (You always want your first time to be somewhere familiar and with someone below your level… right?).

Unfortunately, no one else wanted to run those. So I gave up and shoved myself in the Azjol-Nerub queue. Have you ever been to AN? I have only been there twice before. But the first boss is not friendly. Once you start on your trash, they keep coming in waves followed by the boss.

[Healer]: WAIT FOR MANA!
[Hunter]: ya srsly!

>.< It was only my first boss fight and I was already getting yelled at! I tried to explain to them that I wasn’t pulling, the pulls chain pull themselves. We made it through the fight, even though I died near the end.

The second boss pull is also pretty similar, stuff just keeps coming. We all survived even though I forgot to move out of the green stuff. Last boss went pretty smoothly, and I picked up a tanking ring. I was pretty happy with the run, considering the only person who died was me, and it isn’t really the best instance for your first time tanking.

[Healer]: Anyone want to run Old Kingdom??

Well, at least I knew I wasn’t too bad, since they didn’t kick me from the group after the run! I told them I’ve never been in there before on any character, so I took a couple minutes to get a quick overview of the place.

And this run went much more smoothly than I expected. In fact, the one problem was the hunter. He was a bit too eager. He decided that since he has Misdirect, he is allowed to decide when to make the pulls. He also had his pet on Defensive, so whenever he tried to misdirect, his pet would run over and steal aggro. Argh. I tried to tell him to put his pet on Passive, but he wouldn’t listen.

All in all, the run went well. I picked up another piece of tanking gear! We had 2 or 3 wipes, but they were all caused by the Hunter’s stupid misdirecting when a pat was near, or misdirecting a group when I was pulling a different group. I think I did pretty well!

I didn't get a screenshot of the text... Whoops! I swear it was Ghugh!